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Defamation, Discrimination, and Despoliation

Thomas J. Laub

in After the Fall: German Policy in Occupied France, 1940-1944

At the start of the Occupation, both French and German agencies accepted the fundamental legitimacy of the so‐called Jewish Question (Judenfrage) and adopted anti‐Semitic policies of defamation, ... More

At the start of the Occupation, both French and German agencies accepted the fundamental legitimacy of the so‐called Jewish Question (Judenfrage) and adopted anti‐Semitic policies of defamation, discrimination, and despoliation with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Perceiving Jews as a security threat, the military administration evicted Jews from a security zone along the Channel coast and played a major role in the ‘Aryanization’ of the French economy, but the MBF condemned ‘Aryanization’ on legal grounds and did not believe that Jews stood behind all resistance activity. The Vichy regime defamed and discriminated against Jews on its own accord, created the General Commissariat for Jewish Affairs to despoil Jews, and ordered French police to incarcerate specific categories of Jews, but Pierre Laval objected to the arrest of assimilated French Jews because the roundups undermined support for his government. The SS and German embassy in Paris both championed the entire defamation, discrimination, despoliation, and deportation process, but they lacked the manpower and a legal mandate to act on their own before the summer of 1942. As the fortunes of war turned against the Reich, Hitler championed increasingly ruthless anti‐Semitic measures that culminated in the Final Solution.Less

Introduction: Toward a Physiognomic Epidemiology of the Fetishized Jew

Jay Geller

in The Other Jewish Question: Identifying the Jew and Making Sense of Modernity

This chapter introduces terminology and methods that will be used throughout this study. It offers working definitions of Judentum, antisemitism, Jewish-identified individuals, fetish, modernity, and ... More

This chapter introduces terminology and methods that will be used throughout this study. It offers working definitions of Judentum, antisemitism, Jewish-identified individuals, fetish, modernity, and the morphemic/orthographic/semantic/phonemic field. It also describes a physiognomic epidemiological method, a technique for mapping the emergence and distribution of as well as the interrelationships among particular Jewish-associated morphemes and images in German-language verbal and visual texts. The chapter depicts a European modernity characterized by the emergence of medical/biological and national/evolutionary/colonial narratives and accompanying authorizing discourses by which truth was identified and rendered visible on the body—specifically, the body of “the Jew” and the techniques practiced upon it (e.g., circumcision). It situates the socio-politico Jewish Question in Germanophone lands within the unresolved crisis over whether or not Jewish-identified individuals should or could be integrated into the dominant society.Less

From Rags to Risches: On Marx's Other Jewish Question

Jay Geller

in The Other Jewish Question: Identifying the Jew and Making Sense of Modernity

This chapter demonstrates how the role of Judentum in Karl Marx's work cannot be limited to its few explicit discussions such as in “On the Jewish Question.” Though Marx did not self-identify as a ... More

This chapter demonstrates how the role of Judentum in Karl Marx's work cannot be limited to its few explicit discussions such as in “On the Jewish Question.” Though Marx did not self-identify as a Jew, he was regularly confronted by others who, often venomously, identified him as a Jew. By charting Marx's rhetoric, his use of such Jewish-associated morphemes as “Lump-” (rag, rogue) and “Verkehr-” (intercourse, inverted [verkehrt-]), this chapter analyzes how they may have provided the means by which he not only rendered the theories of his rivals (esp. Max Stirner) ludicrous, but, more significantly, also worked out his understanding of capitalism. In addition to analyses of The German Ideology, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (on the Lumpenproletariat), Capital, and other writings, the chapter situates Marx within a society of endemic anti-Jewish polemic in which Jews were perceived as extensively involved in crime, finance, and various rag trades.Less

A Future without Jews: Max Nordau's Pre-Zionist Answer to the Other Jewish Question

Jay Geller

in The Other Jewish Question: Identifying the Jew and Making Sense of Modernity

This chapter analyzes Max Nordau's best-selling works of 1880s liberal cultural criticism, Conventional Lies of Our Civilization and Paradoxes. Written a decade before his public self-identification ... More

This chapter analyzes Max Nordau's best-selling works of 1880s liberal cultural criticism, Conventional Lies of Our Civilization and Paradoxes. Written a decade before his public self-identification with and affirmation of Judentum when he embraced Theodor Herzl's Zionism, these works demonstrate an obsessive avoidance of the Jewish Question, discussion of which pervaded Germanophone Europe. The chapter argues that Nordau's diagnoses of European modernity were constructed about this (all but total) absence of the Jewish people, especially their contemporary situation and future prospects; that is, he betrays his effort to foreclose his readers' possible identification of him as a Jew by employing puns, wordplays, displacements, conspicuous omissions and inclusions that are replete with references to problematic Jewish attempts at assimilation into European culture and language as well as to antisemitic depictions of the body of “the Jew,” especially as circumcised and diseased (e.g., associated with leprosy).Less

A Silent Pogrom

Benjamin Nathans

in Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia

This chapter traces the genesis of the quotas and examines the way they fostered the emergence of separate Jewish student organizations as the “Jewish Question” insinuated itself into the academy. It ... More

This chapter traces the genesis of the quotas and examines the way they fostered the emergence of separate Jewish student organizations as the “Jewish Question” insinuated itself into the academy. It deals with a collective portrait of Russian-Jewish students in the aftermath of the failed 1905 revolution, based on a series of contemporary surveys conducted at institutions of higher education in Kiev, Odessa, and Moscow.Less

Introduction

Ritchie Robertson

in The ‘Jewish Question’ in German Literature 1749–1939: Emancipation and its Discontents

The ‘Jewish Question’, the problem concerning the position of Jews in Germany and Austria, was widely discussed from the 1770s onwards. Emancipation culminated in 1871 with the bestowal of equal ... More

The ‘Jewish Question’, the problem concerning the position of Jews in Germany and Austria, was widely discussed from the 1770s onwards. Emancipation culminated in 1871 with the bestowal of equal rights on all Jewish citizens of the newly formed German Empire. Along with progress towards emancipation, the Jewish presence in German and Austrian culture became increasingly conspicuous, reaching a peak of brilliance and diversity in the Weimar Republic, before being annihilated or sent into exile by the National Socialist regime. The focus of this book is on the Jewish presence in German literature. It aims to render the ‘Jewish question’ more intelligible by looking at its literary expressions. While the main focus is on the period 1880–1930, it also goes back to the eighteenth century to show how the project of Jewish emancipation was closely tied to an Enlightenment philosemitism which was problematic from the outset.Less

Not Yet Marrano: Levinas, Derrida, and the Ontology of Being Jewish

Ethan Kleinberg

in The Trace of God: Derrida and Religion

This essay explores the divergent though intertwined presentations of Jewish identity in the post World War Two philosophies of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida. There is a temporal, geographical ... More

This essay explores the divergent though intertwined presentations of Jewish identity in the post World War Two philosophies of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida. There is a temporal, geographical and cultural gulf that separates these two thinkers but these distances can be bridged at the site of Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1946 text Reflections on the Jewish Question insofar as Levinas and Derrida’s responses to Sartre create a textual intersection between Levinas’s “Being-Jewish” (1947), and Derrida’s “Abraham the Other” (2000).  The relation and connection between Levinas and Derrida becomes more clear when one considers the way that Derrida’s essay is implicitly and more importantly a confrontation with the philosophy of Levinas.  What’s more the texts by Levinas and Derrida are each predicated on responses to the philosophy of Martin Heidegger in relation to his involvement with the National Socialist party. Despite the separation between the texts, both these thinkers chose to replace, evade, or preempt this “Jewish Question” by instead posing the question of “being-Jewish” in response to the Holocaust, the Nazi Final Solution. This essay explores the ramifications of this connection in relation to Levinas’s ethical philosophy of the other in his “Talmudic writings” and Derrida’s category of the “Marrano."Less

The Foreign Policies of an Uncertain People

Michael N. Barnett

in The Star and the Stripes: A History of the Foreign Policies of American Jews

This chapter argues that the future foreign policies of American Jews will depend on the future of American Jews, their identity, how they imagine themselves in relation to the particular and the ... More

This chapter argues that the future foreign policies of American Jews will depend on the future of American Jews, their identity, how they imagine themselves in relation to the particular and the universal, and how such projections connect to contemporary practices of tribalism and cosmopolitanism, especially as they relate to the Jewish Problem and the Jewish Question. It sets out two scenarios that are most likely because they represent a combination of the past and the present. One future is defined by tribalism and the overshadowing of the Jewish Question by the Jewish Problem. The alternative to the tribal is the cosmopolitan, which treats the Jewish Question as relatively more important than the Jewish Problem, wants to see a Jewish people that is connected to humanity, and expresses greater ambivalence toward a more nationalistic Israel.Less

Spreading Empire and Civilization in Morocco, 1878–1906

Karine V. Walther

in Sacred Interests: The United States and the Islamic World, 1821-1921

Chapter 4 begins in 1878 with American intercessions on behalf of Moroccan Jews during two international conferences, the Madrid Conference of 1880 and the Algeciras Conference of 1906. At the Madrid ... More

Chapter 4 begins in 1878 with American intercessions on behalf of Moroccan Jews during two international conferences, the Madrid Conference of 1880 and the Algeciras Conference of 1906. At the Madrid Conference, these discussions centered on maintaining the protégé system, which many believed was essential in protecting Moroccan Jews from oppression. At the Algeciras Conference, American elites explicitly endorsed the extension of French empire to Morocco. These actions were driven by American Jewish organizations such as the Board of Delegates of American Israelites and later, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, with the aid of prominent Jewish leaders such as Jacob Schiff. But such activism was facilitated by diplomatic and political elites, including Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root, and Felix Mathews, who had their own personal and diplomatic interests for participating in these conferences.Less

History, Experience, and Democracy István Bibó Revisited: The Jewish Question after 1944–Fifty Years Later

Robert Braun

in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry Volume 11: Focusing on Aspects and Experiences of Religion

This chapter examines István Bibó's essay ‘The Jewish Question’. It is not for its political relevance that Bibó's work on the Jewish question should be read today. The essay was written and first ... More

This chapter examines István Bibó's essay ‘The Jewish Question’. It is not for its political relevance that Bibó's work on the Jewish question should be read today. The essay was written and first published in an era when many countries were groping for an answer to questions posed by the incredible tragedy of the Jewish people. Parallel to this was the search for an answer to ‘the collapse of respectable European society’. The date of the essay's publication is not the only reason to place Bibó's book among the most important works to have searched for an interpretation and explanation of the tragedy. The problem of how to represent and comprehend the Holocaust, as well as the historical and social issues of the Jewish question, are still at the forefront of scholarly debates.Less

The Polish Revolt of 1863 and the Birth of Russification: Bad for the Jews?

John D. Klier

in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry Volume 1: Poles and Jews: Renewing the Dialogue

This chapter addresses how the Polish uprising of 1863 was a traumatic event for Russian society. It was an early warning that the reform era in Russia would not immediately solve all the problems of ... More

This chapter addresses how the Polish uprising of 1863 was a traumatic event for Russian society. It was an early warning that the reform era in Russia would not immediately solve all the problems of Russian society. The events of the revolt itself, and the pro-Polish diplomatic effort it produced, provoked a wave of patriotism and heightened national feeling in Russia. A central feature of this new mood was a determination to deal with the Polish Question once and for all. Proposals to this end came to be known collectively as ‘Russification’. A standard assumption in the secondary literature is that policies of Russification had dire consequences for national minorities in the Russian Empire. This claim has been made particularly strongly in the case of the Jews. At the end of the 1850s, Russian public opinion, as represented by the periodical press, was mildly sympathetic to the plight of the Jews in the Russian Empire. By the end of the 1860s, Russian opinion was sharply divided on the Jewish Question and Judeophobia was a visibly growing phenomenon.Less

A Turning Point in the History of Polish Socialism and its Attitude Towards the Jewish Question

Moshe Mishkinsky

Antony Polonsky and Antony Polonsky (eds)

in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry Volume 1: Poles and Jews: Renewing the Dialogue

This chapter describes a turning point in the history of Polish Socialism and its attitude towards the Jewish Question. In dealing with the concept of the Jewish Question, the intention is not, as is ... More

This chapter describes a turning point in the history of Polish Socialism and its attitude towards the Jewish Question. In dealing with the concept of the Jewish Question, the intention is not, as is often the case, to dwell solely upon the legal status of Jews (emancipation) but to view the problems of Jewish existence in their diversity. According to one view, the dependence upon non Jewish society represents an integral element or, even a determinant, in these problems. In the context of Polish–Jewish relations from the historical perspective of the last hundred years, one may discern six aspects of the subject. These include the development of Socialist thought in its different versions as regards the Jews; the influence of the gradual growth and development of the emerging working class in Polish society; the influence of the relatively large involvement of Jews within the Socialist Labour Movement; the impact of the new processes which matured in the last quarter of the 19th century on the life of Eastern European Jewry in general, and on the Polish–Jewish area in particular; the growth alongside each other, but also in conflict, of two political and ideological movements — Polish Socialism and Jewish labour Socialism; and the tension between the Socialist and the national elements which was common to both yet different in its concrete content.Less

Mass Society, II

David Sorkin

in Jewish Emancipation: A History Across Five Centuries

This chapter describes the new politics that emerged in fin-de-siècle Europe, which challenged liberal democracy and bourgeois society. Zionists and Autonomists espoused the idea that Jews were a ... More

This chapter describes the new politics that emerged in fin-de-siècle Europe, which challenged liberal democracy and bourgeois society. Zionists and Autonomists espoused the idea that Jews were a nation entitled to its own national life either as a majority in Palestine or a national minority in Europe. Both developed the concept of “assimilation” to denigrate emancipation's pernicious effects. In eastern Europe, all the Jews' political parties—emancipationists, Zionists, Autonomists, Bundist Socialists—embraced a version of national minority rights. Meanwhile, the Bund represented a Jewish socialism that dreamed of a classless society to solve the Jewish Question. Orthodox Jews mobilized to press their own causes and to counter the multiple threats of the organized secular political parties. Ultimately, the developments of the fin de siècle were to shape Jewish life in the first four decades of the twentieth century.Less

Jewish American Activism in the Ottoman Empire and Morocco, 1840–1878

Karine V. Walther

in Sacred Interests: The United States and the Islamic World, 1821-1921

Chapter 3 analyzes American Jewish activism to help their persecuted brethren during the 1840 Damascus Affair where accusations of a blood libel against Syrian subjects led to an international call ... More

Chapter 3 analyzes American Jewish activism to help their persecuted brethren during the 1840 Damascus Affair where accusations of a blood libel against Syrian subjects led to an international call for intervention. The chapter also focuses on how the Damascus Affair helped prompt the rise of American Jewish organizations dedicated in part to helping their oppressed brethren abroad, including the Board of Delegates of American Israelites. The chapter than analyzes American cooperation with British and French Jewish organizations, including the British Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Alliance Israélite Universelle, to intervene during the Spanish-Moroccan War of 1859 and the Safi Affair in 1863. This chapter analyzes how Jewish Americans attempted to reframe discussions of American identity by emphasizing the United States as a model for religious toleration and secularism, while at the same time distancing themselves from identification with racist depictions of “Oriental” Muslims.Less

Von Galen and the Jews

Beth A. Griech-Polelle

in Bishop von Galen: German Catholicism and National Socialism

This chapter talks about the relationship von Galen had with the Jews through the years before, during, and after the Second World War. It first considers the plausible explanations why the leaders ... More

This chapter talks about the relationship von Galen had with the Jews through the years before, during, and after the Second World War. It first considers the plausible explanations why the leaders of the Catholic Church remained silent with regards to the Jewish Question, and then looks at the German Catholics' view of the Jews as a demoralizing and threatening influence in the country. The discussion then presents a short history of the Jews in Westphalia and von Galen's defense of a number of issues, including the Catholics and Hitler's speech on the Jewish Question. Von Galen's dislike of Bolshevism and his image of the Jews is also covered in this chapter.Less

Sacred Convictions, 1939–44

James Mace Ward

in Priest, Politician, Collaborator: Jozef Tiso and the Making of Fascist Slovakia

This chapter focuses on Tiso's complicity in the Holocaust. The genocide and the related power struggle with the Slovak radicals provide the best view of the limits of Tiso's presidential power and ... More

This chapter focuses on Tiso's complicity in the Holocaust. The genocide and the related power struggle with the Slovak radicals provide the best view of the limits of Tiso's presidential power and his priorities for exercising it. Moreover, his participation in the destruction of Slovak Jewry has indeed defined his life, whether appropriately or not. During his early presidency, Tiso strove for greater independence from Germany and control over regime radicals such as Vojtech Tuka and Alexander (Ša ňo) Mach. After Hitler made them protégés in mid-1940, Tiso engaged them in a two-year power struggle, which he won. In the process, his central agendas increasingly intersected with the Jewish Question. Most of the time, it became a resource for co-opting opponents or for advancing his own programs. Less often, it was a bone of contention on which he had to make concessions, or at least appear to do so.Less

The Great Inquiry, 1823–1824

Marcin Wodziński

in Hasidism and Politics: The Kingdom of Poland, 1815-1864

This chapter outlines the most important episode in the political history of Hasidism in central Poland, the government investigation conducted in the years 1823 and 1824. It clarifies how the ... More

This chapter outlines the most important episode in the political history of Hasidism in central Poland, the government investigation conducted in the years 1823 and 1824. It clarifies how the investigation showed that Hasidism could potentially become an important element in the government's more general political program for the Jewish population. Once state officials began to connect Hasidism to the broader issue of the Jewish Question, their interest in the movement greatly increased. The chapter also discusses the investigation of 1823–4 that was more significantly influenced by the Enlightenment approach to the reform of Jewish society than earlier investigations had been. A major factor was the active participation of Staszic, who constantly returned to the continuing debate on the Jewish Question.Less